I believe that mathematics should be taught, not collaboratively explored; algebra and geometry are better than a vague course of Integrated Math; spiraling doesn't work nearly as well as learning it properly the first time; "I don't DO math" should be an incentive rather than an excuse. "I don't DO English" should be treated the same way.

Friday, September 11, 2009

The new Census Bureau report on income is out, and the New York Times has some interesting analyses. Here are a few of them summarized:

For the first time since the Census has been keeping records, median income is less than it was ten years ago. And even though the top quintile of workers' incomes increased, the decrease in the other four quintiles was significant enough to make the median income in 2008 less than it was in 1998. In short, the rich have gotten richer, and everyone else, poorer.
In terms of the relation between family income and SAT test scores, the Times analyis shows the statistical relation a monstrous direct correlation (.95). This same correlation, by the way, can be found in any set of state test scores for elementary school children, too. Poor kids do worse on high-stakes standardized tests, so let's keep them poor and contained by using these tests to determine who gets a chance for the best teaching, the best colleges, and the best jobs. Simple. The rest will get the corporate welfare apartheid charter schools with minimally-qualified missionaries from Teach for America, along with no libraries, no art, music, athletics, or even cafeterias. And thus, The New Eugenics in Action.
As family income and wealth goes, so go the test scores, so let's blame, once again, the schools and the teachers for the flat or diminishing test scores, rather than the corporate exporters of jobs over the past decade or the greed of CEOs or the enemies of workers' rights or the anti-educational curriculums of the testocrats.

About Me

I'm a high-school math teacher completely frustrated with new math, reform math, fuzzy math, the color of math, talking about math, literacy across the curriculum and all those other things that get in the way of students actually learning math, not to mention the ever-present "You need to help raise our scores by taking one day a week to go over test-taking skills" and other administrative folderol.